Freedom
by Stodgey
Summary: Freedom had become his cage, and there would be no escape. [Darkfic. Implied NC.]


**A/N: And yet another fandom I fall into, head first. This was a bit of a cathartic experience for me, and I must apologise in advance. I'm actually making a concerted effort to make you cry here, so, please, feel free to hate me.**

**WARNINGS: Darkfic, implied non-consensual activity.**

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Peter sat and stared dully at the crack of weak, purple light. It was dawn outside, his mind noted involuntarily, his arms tightening around his drawn up knees as he huddled closer into the corner. It was dawn and there was light and there were no heavy footsteps or cruel voices to taint his very existence.

_The door was open._

And he could do nothing but sit and stare out of the darkness, one eye bruised a dark purple and so swollen that it was useless and the other caked nearly shut with dried blood from a jagged split above his eyebrow. A parody of a stare, really, and he just couldn't seem to focus. The light hurt.

_The door was open._

The door was never open. The door was the lid of his box, the cover of his coffin, and the only reason it was ever unbolted was if his holders wanted to hurt him. Hurt him more than they had done already.

After his capture - it seemed so long, felt like a life time ago now - it had felt like the door had never been shut. Back then, Hook had taken a personal interest in him, still very much buoyed up by the imprisonment of his nemesis, the boy who wouldn't grow up, and had seldom left him alone. His days had been filled with the crack of the whip and his screams carried on, intensified, well into the nights, which were coloured with a much darker type of pain. He had screamed for so hard and so long that one day his voice had caught in his throat and had simply left him, giving up and fleeing like his shadow had once done, a ruined perversion of a silent croak all that was left to him now - perhaps forever.

It didn't matter, he had told himself, though for some reason he hadn't been able to stop the tears from flowing when even the most important word in the entire world - _Wendy -_ sounded little more than a tired growl. It wasn't like there was anyone left to talk to, anyway. And it had given him some small measure of satisfaction that Hook had become angry when he hadn't been able to beg anymore.

Hook had grown bored shortly after that - bored of staking him out on the deck in the worst ravages of the storms which constantly racked Neverland - bored of his body when the scars of the daily tortures began to accumulate, disfiguring him - bored of merely sitting with Peter's head on his knee, stroking his greasy, bloody tangle of hair whilst quietly recounting the horrific last moments of Nibbs, Slightly, Tootles, Curly, the Twins, John, Michael. Wendy. The worst torture of all.

He became bored when Peter had been broken - the sport no fun when the novelty of his sworn enemy cowering and dully obedient beneath his hands had worn off. And so, like any good Captain, Hook had decided to split the spoils with his crew.

The pain had been bad at the start, the pirates extremely enthusiastic about their prize after their appetites had been whetted by Nibbs and Curly - none of the details being spared in the telling by Hook - but none of them were as controlled or as calculating as their Captain had been. None of their barbs delivered on fetid breath wounded him like his had. The nights had been the worst; his own nightmares and the reality of multiple sweating, stinking bodies pressed close, touching him, pleasuring themselves with him, almost indistinguishable. His time spent with Smee had been particularly memorable - the warm, damp, podgy hands and their delicate caresses ghosting over him, and the soft, crooning words in his ear as the first mate steadily directed his head down to the pallid, straining lump of flesh between his legs, making him feel sick with a revulsion he hadn't felt since his first few nights with Hook. But even the crew, none of whom were known for their good tastes, had grown bored after a while of the pitiable figure he had become, and it took a mixture of boredom and too much rum before the door opened now.

Like last night.

_The door was open._

Peter shifted slightly, grimacing as a bolt of pain arrowed up his spine from his backside. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps the two dark, stinking figures from last night had been so drunk that they had neglected to bolt the warped oak door behind them. Perhaps they had been so busy rearranging their clothing and congratulating themselves on a job well done that they had forgotten. Perhaps in his pain-soaked world, curled up in his corner, Peter hadn't been aware of their lapse - hadn't missed the heavy, final _clunk_ of the bolt being driven home.

He continued to stare at his first unfettered glimpse of the world for a few more moments, his eyes misting, then dropped his head onto his scarred knees. He just couldn't summon up the strength. What did it matter? It didn't matter. He couldn't escape now, whether he wanted to or not. Too much had happened - too much had been inflicted on his body and his mind. Where would he go if he managed to get off the ship? Back to Neverland and the memories of blood and death which stalked him there? He had no company anymore, all of them stolen from the world simply because they had had a connection with him. No Lost Boys. No Wendy. His heart ached in his chest.

And if it was a trick - if the pirates caught him trying to escape - Hook would know. Hook would be back, a gleam in his eye, his interest piqued once more. And he couldn't live through that again. He _wouldn't_ live through that again. He was broken now - they had broken him - and the knowledge didn't bring bile to his throat or a sneer to his cracked lips in self-hatred as it once would have done. He didn't mind being a numbed shell, able to cry but not to feel. It made his life tolerable. He lived, he existed, but not much more, he knew.

The darkness behind his tightly shut eyelids became perceptibly lighter, and he grimaced slightly, burrowing further into his knees, ignoring the dull, muted ringing in his ears. The pirates had come for him. They had known about the door from the very beginning. It had all been a cruel trick after all. And he had proved to them all just how lifeless he really was. He had been a good boy.

A tiny hand stroked his ear.

He jerked his head upwards, his eyes diluting in shock and from the intensity of the golden light in front of him, the ringing in his ears separating and solidifying into the gentle caress of fairy bells.

"Tinkerbell," he rasped in disbelief.

She nodded at him excitedly, darting around in front of his eyes, beaming proudly and making low chattering noises of pleasure. She had found him. She had opened the door. Peter nodded, but didn't move, his eyes taken in the changed form of his companion in silence. Tinkerbell's dress was torn and ragged, her pointed, tiny face pale and drawn and physically inflicted with the torment of the time passed. Her light had dimmed significantly - something Peter couldn't help but feel glad about, his eyes still burning and tearing and filled with green and purple stars after not seeing more than flashes of dusk in weeks - and the tip of one gossamer wing was bent back, making her fly with a list. It seemed nothing good in Neverland could survive when Hook was in control.

She made a soft query and, when he didn't reply, she began flittering around him, her light touch ghosting over every inch of his body making him flinch and squirm in discomfort as she examined him intensely after so long parted, emitting chittering noises of distress every time she reached bruised, broken, scarred flesh. Peter curled up even more, hugging his legs to the paper-like skin over his chest, experiencing every hurt again as she shed light on them, his face burning in some contradiction of humiliation. When her exploration was finally complete, she hovered in front of his eyes, scowling and making stabbing motions with her fists. He shrugged, noncommittally, their gazes locking and holding.

He was the first to look away.

The fairy made a slight query again, then shot up above his head, streaming dazzling dust in a sparkling mist which fell over him like sun flecks barren of their warmth. She returned to him and nodded excitedly once more, waving enthusiastically with her hands towards the open doorway. She didn't understand. He couldn't. No escape. He looked at her for a silent moment, then smiled painfully.

"I can't, Tink," he rasped dryly. "No more happy thoughts."

She queried, then again, louder, when he didn't reply. She stamped her foot and stood with her hands on hips, glaring at him childishly. Peter just shook his head, eyes flat and shiny, allowing her censure to wash over him without hurting him like he had learnt to do after long practice with the pirates. He couldn't argue. It wasn't his choice, he wasn't making a decision. It was fact, plain and simple. Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up, had forgotten how to fly - had had the ability stripped forcibly from him bit by bit with every beating and every rape and every taunt he had ever suffered. And now there was no escape for him without his wings - no escape into the real world - no way he could grow up like he had never wanted to do before. Neverland's name had taken on a whole new context, a whole new twisted meaning. And it had hurt - once upon a time.

Tinkerbell made a rude noise and grabbed one hand, his fingers gnarled and twisted from multiple breakages, and began pulling him, pulling him out of the safety of his corner and towards the door. The open door. He kicked out in his panic, struggling with his heavy, misused and feeble limbs, wide-eyed and manic as the light from outside coalesced and filled his hazy vision. No, he couldn't. There was no escape for him. They had all been taken from him. He didn't want to return to what was - he couldn't return, he didn't have the ability. He didn't want the happy memories to remind him of what was lost. He wouldn't be able to take it.

"No," he croaked. "No, Tink, no. Let go! No. No no no no." It became a dreadful litany, as his struggles grew weaker and the horror of the outside grew nearer and he shut his eyes as Hook's face loomed out of the darkness, smiling hatefully, and Smee's clammy hands touched him in forbidden places, and the whip cracked and his body was torn asunder and his innocence was taken from him and his love of life evaporated and all the people he cared about were ripped from the world…

"I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies." The rasping, broken litany changed, and there was a dreadful silence, the roaring in his ears stopping as his forward motion came to a halt. "I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies." The grip on his hand faded and disappeared. "I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in -" Something small and light hit the floor in front of him.

Peter struggled backwards desperately, back into his corner, back into his broken existence. He curled up, hugging the walls, and only when his heart had stopped fluttering in abject terror did he open his eyes to the consuming blackness. There was no golden light anymore. No hint of magic, sparkling dust which shimmered even in the blackest of places. He was alone in his hell.

Tinkerbell's body lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, her tiny face set in a grimace of pain. He stared at her in uncomprehending dread for long moments, his empty chest struggling to try and find an emotion which he had thought had long since left him - an emotion he had thought he would never need again. Something inside of him hurt. On scraped, bloodied knees he carefully hunched forward, reaching out a finger to touch the fragile body of the fairy who had looked after him forever. She was so cold. He flinched back for a moment, his shattered insides impossibly crumbling even further to dust, then reached out again and scooped up her limp body in his mutilated hands. Carefully, he shuffled back to his corner.

He cradled Tinkerbell in his arms, tears streaming unheeded down his face, scouring clean tracks in the grime of his face, whispering childish promises in his harsh, ugly voice to the beautiful, dead fairy in his grasp. _It would be alright. It would be. He was sorry. They would escape together._

His blue, red rimmed eyes didn't leave the crack of dull light coming through the door, the grey dash of sky mocking him until the pirates returned at daybreak. _Freedom._

_End _


End file.
